Ghost Town, the electronic rock trio hailing from Los Angeles has quickly risen up the charts with their unique musical style. After forming in 2012, the band signed to Fueled By Ramen a year later and re-released their debut record, Party In The Graveyard, to cement their spot on the map. Two albums later, the trio’s stylistic approach continues to warrant praise as their music lends a much deeper meaning than what appears on the surface.
We sat down with Kevin “Ghost” McCullough, Alix “Monster” Koochaki and Manny “MannYtheDrummer” Dominick to discuss their summer on Warped Tour, Evolution, and comic books.
How is this Warped Tour been going for you guys?
Kevin: It’s going really well!
How have you been dealing with the heat? Does it affect you on stage at all?
Kevin: There becomes a point when you sweat out more liquid than you consume and that’s when it becomes dangerous. Manny was telling me the other day he saw spots in his vision and that’s the first sign that you’re going to pass out. Sometimes it gets so hot that I get the chills.
Alix: Just head-bang through it.
What’s it like being one of the only electronic bands on the tour?
Kevin: We take a lot of pride in being an electronic band for sure, but we also take a lot of pride in writing awesome songs. We flow in either direction.
Alix: It’s never really fazed us on any tour whether we’re touring with hardcore bands or pop bands, we just do our thing.
Are their any bands outside your genre on this tour that you really enjoy?
Alix: Oh definitely! The Maine, Every Time I Die. Falling In Reverse, who are close but not quite our genre. I See Stars.
This is definitely a question that you’ve answered before, but how did each one of you get your nicknames?
Kevin: At the beginning of the band, no one knew what we looking like and we ran with it. We started gaining fans really quickly without showing our faces and we wanted to make it a point that people liked us for our music and art. We have a really crazy visual aspect to our band. A lot of people don’t know that we’re a conceptual band. We have a comic book out, a piece of artwork for every single song and an artist that’s an honorary member of the band. When we were hiding our faces within the first three months, we also wanted to hide our identities in general. [Nicknames] were a split-second decision and it stuck.
Forming the band, Kevin and Alix, you were high school classmates?
Alix: High school sweethearts (laughs).
What’s it like being on Warped Tour now considering you’ve come such a long way together?
Kevin: Dude, I remember Alix was selling tickets to play a show at Chain Reaction and I was pissed off at him because I was jealous. Chain Reaction was one of the bigger venues in our area.
Alix: In all honesty, ever since I discovered that you could be in a band and make your own music, that’s all I ever envisioned. It was always something I could see clearly in my head. It feels great that it’s actually happening.
Did you have any goals or expectation for this Warped Tour, like a minimum number of hours of sleep every night?
Alix: Going into this tour I planned on working out every morning, but then after getting up at 7:30 and unloading the truck for an hour I lost that motivation. The shows have been awesome and that was a big expectation to go out there and crush it everyday.
Are you working on any albums at the moment or is this a time period for just touring?
Kevin: We’re always writing and recording new music. We just did a stint of Ghost Town Tuesdays which is something that we’ll always and forever do regardless of how soon we recently came out with a record. I would say that we’ll probably see through the year writing and recording some stuff and see if it forms another record or Ghost Town Tuesdays.
You stated that meaning behind your most recent record, Evolution, is much different then your other two albums. Evolution is directed towards the idea that it’s not about what you wear or how many followers you have. How do you personally support that idea outside music or off the stage?
Kevin: Just treating everyone with respect and not giving them more or less because of their presence online. There’s so many things that you can do to not aid that superficial vision that everyone has toward the fake world that we live in and base how we feel about ourselves off of. Just imagine if it was all deleted in an hour from now, what do you have left?
Manny: I just post and get out of the app and just go on about your life. I don’t read comments or look at the number of likes it has. That can be good practice. Post a selfie and add a filter, but then get out of the app.
Kevin: It would actaully be interesting if social media went away and we had to go pass out flyers in order to be a band. That’d be cool.
Alix: The feeling and overall vibe that we wanted to give out with Evolution was that we’re all apart of a bigger thing. the more people that have that likeminded thought process and make connections person-to-person. That’s going to spread further and last longer.
Kevin: We’ve come up through social media super hard and used that as a tool but after our show we stand outside and meet every person that came to see us face-to-face.
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